Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Mar 23: A deputation of General Line Teachers Forum, under the leadership of State president Neeraj Sharma, called on Syed Mohd Altaf Bukhari, Minister for Education and Finance at his official residence in Jammu and submitted him a memorandum seeking redressal of various issues of the teachers community.
Neeraj Sharma drew attention towards the pay anomaly of teachers and explained the Minister that from 1996 till date, the Government had not taken any initiative to improve the standards of the teachers and every time teacher’s post was being placed below to all the non gazetted posts in the State with regard to pay scale and grade pay.
He further explained that there are various posts in the State whose minimum selection qualification is merely 10th like driver, tyre operator etc but they are drawing equal salary as of teachers, which is an open injustice with the highly qualified teachers.
The Minister assured the deputation that their genuine demand of removal of pay anomaly would be redressed before the implementation of 7th Pay Commission as all the codal formalities for the up gradation of pay scale and pay band of teacher were almost done by the Director Codes Finance.
The other demands, highlighted by the Forum, included; early conduct of DPC of Teacher to Master and Lab Assistant to teacher, revision of recruitment rule and making B Ed as essential qualification for teacher’s post along with graduation, change in time bound (in-situ) promotion to the next higher grade in the department, increase the cadre strength of Master/Lecturer etc to provide an opportunity of functional promotion to all as there is huge stagnation in the department.
Those who were part of the deputation included Dr Parshotam Singh, Digvijay Singh, Amit, Naresh Manhas, Himat Sharma, Surinder Singh and others.